Surveys that measure subjective states like happiness or preferences often generate discrete ordinal data. Ordered response models, which are commonly used to analyze such data, suffer from a fundamental identification problem. Their conclusions depend on unjustified assumptions about the...

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance evaluation is delegated to a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of the bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal...

We consider the design of contests when the principal can choose both the prize profile and how the prizes are allocated as a function of a possibly noisy signal about the agents’ efforts. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee optimality of a contest. Optimal contests have a...

Surveys that are designed to measure subjective states (e.g., happiness) typically generate ordinal data. A fundamental problem is that methods used to analyse ordinal data (e.g., ordered probit) rely on strong and often unjustified distributional assumptions. In this paper, we propose using...

Surveys are an important tool in economics and in the social sciences more broadly. However, methods used to analyse ordinal survey data (e.g., ordered probit) rely on strong and often unjustified distributional assumptions. In this paper, we propose using survey response times to solve that...

We consider the design of contests for n agents when the principal can choose both the prize profile and the contest success function. Our framework includes Tullock contests, Lazear-Rosen tournaments and all-pay contests as special cases, among others. We show that the optimal contest has an...

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance is evaluated by a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal fixes a set of prizes...

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance evaluation is delegated to a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal determines a...